I’m going through AO3 tags, trying to round up all the freeforms in the wilderness of No Fandom that should be in Christmas Tales & Traditions. Everything from Christmas caroling to Santa pub crawls to ugly holiday sweaters.

On the plus side, in the process I’ve put at least a few dozen 0-use tags in the path of the rake (the daily subroutine that gets rid of such things). So that number should look a smidge less intimidating soon….

…in association with this TV series, and the art is this unholy hybrid of Flash animation and Dr. Seuss’s original drawing style. It’s such a trainwreck. Especially when you compare it to something like How The Grinch Stole Christmas, which animates Seuss’ character designs with so much love and care in order to make them work.

Although I do give them points for making the reindeer look like actual caribou, not Rankin-Bass-esque white-tailed deer standing in snow.

Early in the episode, the plucky kid heroes arrive home, and one of them goes “Look! Our dads are bringing in the tree!” Smash-cut to two clean-cut men, one black & one white, carrying a giant fir.

I was briefly so excited. Casual same-sex couple in a children’s show, and not just any children’s show, but a Seuss adaptation?!

…and then the moms showed up, and eventually it sank in that these weren’t the divorced moms spending Christmas with their exes and the kids to round out the blended family, these were just two unrelated heterosexual couples, having Christmas dinner in the same house for some reason.

Which makes it all the more annoying that the Cat (voiced by Martin Short) is played with the most exaggerated, campiest, lispiest voice you could imagine.

Do you ever suspect that that something could be “an animated video in which Santa Claus and an anthropomorphized FOX News attack the Daily Show desk with rifles, only to have Jon Stewart defeat them using a fire extinguisher, then harness them to the sleigh and take off”?

Apparently playing bad music is a calculated strategy to get you to buy more. When you’re frustrated and overstimulated, your system panics and you’ll make the decision to buy something just so you can feel like you have closure and can get out of there.

This explains so much.

So, yeah, I work in retail now. A couple weeks in, and I have a whole lot of Feelings about their playlist. Like: No traditional carols that namecheck Jesus are on it. Okay, that’s understandable — they’re trying to get that holiday mood without annoying the non-Christians too too much. Except that the rule doesn’t apply to Taylor “here’s to Jesus Christ who saved our lives” Swift. What’s up with that?

Also, for some reason “Little Drummer Boy” doesn’t get nixed. (Do they think Muslim customers won’t get that it’s about the nativity?) Meanwhile, lovely classics like “Silver Bells” and “Deck The Halls” don’t get played in any version. I object.

There’s a sharp contrast between the “buy more stuff!” songs (“Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town”, “Santa Baby”, the insufferable “Toy Town”, etc) and the “Christmas is not about the stuff!” songs (“Christmas Must Be Something More”, endless variations of “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, “One Wish (For Christmas)”, anything related to The Grinch). Maybe the latter category is there to give them plausible deniability about the former.

They have three separate songs about celebrating Christmas in a tropical place. (“Christmas in the Caribbean”, “Christmas on Christmas Island”, and “Mele Kalikimaka”). It’s cute and trope-twisting when it comes in the middle of a bunch of more typical songs, but starts to grate when the idea is being smacked at you all the time. Call me back when you’ve decided to let “White Wine In The Sun” in on the action.

There’s one Mannheim Steamroller song. It’s a great song. Did they just buy the one? What, was the rest of the album not good enough?

You can make some inferences about the customer base from the playlist. We get a whole lot of Spanish-speaking customers, and there’s a decent amount of Spanish versions of carols. I can’t vouch for how well they work (my sample size of one, a co-worker, said she thought they were trying too hard). There’s also a fair proportion of black customers, so the playlist has one single Kwanzaa song, which I cannot for the life of me find online in video or lyric form, in spite of the fact that it’s stuck in my head right now. (“It’s a Kwanzaa celebration! Honor elders from the family tree! If not for them there’d be no you and me receiving glory from above. It’s a Kwanzaa celebration! Come together with your family. Something celebrate our history and the harvest of our love!”)

No sign yet of a Hanukkah song, btw.

I had thought, previously, that “Feliz Navidad” would be the song I hated most. I was wrong. It helps that they have a couple of versions that are sung prettily, crooned and harmonized, instead of the weird exaggerated Speedy Gonzales-esque cover that was the only one the radio back in MD ever played. No, the song that makes me want to punch things, or at least go hide in one of the young-adult corners of the store (tiny enclaves with TVs that play pop songs) until it’s over, is “Run, Run, Rudolph”. Multiple versions of it. If I never have to hear one more male singer happily imitating a girl whose greatest ambition in make-believe is to clean up baby pee, it will be too soon.

(It’s very disorienting to come out of one of the teen sections and transition from Taylor Swift singing “We are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together” to Taylor Swift singing “Santa, Baby”.)

Also up there on the DNW list: “Little Saint Nick”. It’s apparently a riff on one of the Beach Boys’ other songs with Christmassy words put in, but since the other song (“Little Deuce Coupe“) isn’t played any more, nobody gets the joke and the result is just kind of teeth-gritting. Oh, and the speedy polka version of “Step Into Christmas”! Who thought that was a good idea? (Elton John’s version can stay.)

There are a couple of songs that have come up, but don’t seem to be on the endless-repeat list. Springsteen’s iconic “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” was there earlier, but I feel like I didn’t hear it at all last week. Same with Glee’s “Extraordinary Merry Christmas”. And I swear they played the SpongeBob version of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” (which I had not known existed until then), precisely once. It has not returned.

Some bright spots: “2000 Miles” is pretty, as is “We Need A Little Christmas”. There are a bunch of covers of “Last Christmas”, all very lovely. I haven’t even ranted about all the ones with adults trying too hard to sound like cutsey children, which apparently means they’re not a lasting annoyance. And there are some notable terrors that they haven’t even touched. (Three words: “Dominic the Donkey”.)

So that was my Christmas music rant! Next up: customers: why don’t they notice that we have trash cans? Even if you don’t, come on, at least carry your kid’s used juice box out into the main mall and throw it out there, instead of leaving it on our T-shirt displays.

Gods rest ye, Unitarians, let nothing you dismay
Remember there’s no evidence there was a Christmas Day
When Christ was born is just not known, no matter what they say

O, tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact
O, tidings of reason and fact!

Our current Christmas customs come from Persia and from Greece
From solstice celebrations of the ancient Middle East
This whole darn Christmas spiel is just another pagan feast

O, tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact
O, tidings of reason and fact!

There was no star of Bethlehem, there was no angels’ song
There couldn’t have been wise men for the trip would take too long
The stories in the Bible are historically wrong

O, tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact
O, tidings of reason and fact!

***

(To the tune of Jesus Christ Is Risen Today)Jesus Christ May or May Not Have Risen Todayset for Pretty Yellow Flower Day

Jesus Christ may or may not have risen today
Alleluia
Whether or not he did is pretty difficult to say
Alleluia
Let’s discuss all sides of the issue thoroughly
Alleluia
We can take a vote! And then we’ll see
Alleluia